How to print instances of a class using print()?

Question

I am learning the ropes in Python. When I try to print an object of class Foobar using the print() function, I ge

Answer 1

There are already a lot of answers in this thread but none of them particularly helped me, I had to work it out myself, so I hope this one is a little more informative.

You just have to make sure you have parentheses at the end of your class, e.g:

print(class())

Here's an example of code from a project I was working on:

class Element:
    def __init__(self, name, symbol, number):
        self.name = name
        self.symbol = symbol
        self.number = number
    def __str__(self):
        return "{}: {}\nAtomic Number: {}\n".format(self.name, self.symbol, self.number

class Hydrogen(Element):
    def __init__(self):
        super().__init__(name = "Hydrogen", symbol = "H", number = "1")

To print my Hydrogen class, I used the following:

print(Hydrogen())

Please note, this will not work without the parentheses at the end of Hydrogen. They are necessary.

Hope this helps, let me know if you have anymore questions.

Answer 2

As Chris Lutz mentioned, this is defined by the __repr__ method in your class.

From the documentation of repr():

For many types, this function makes an attempt to return a string that would yield an object with the same value when passed to eval(), otherwise the representation is a string enclosed in angle brackets that contains the name of the type of the object together with additional information often including the name and address of the object. A class can control what this function returns for its instances by defining a __repr__() method.

Given the following class Test:

class Test:
    def __init__(self, a, b):
        self.a = a
        self.b = b

    def __repr__(self):
        return "<Test a:%s b:%s>" % (self.a, self.b)

    def __str__(self):
        return "From str method of Test: a is %s, b is %s" % (self.a, self.b)

..it will act the following way in the Python shell:

>>> t = Test(123, 456)
>>> t
<Test a:123 b:456>
>>> print repr(t)
<Test a:123 b:456>
>>> print(t)
From str method of Test: a is 123, b is 456
>>> print(str(t))
From str method of Test: a is 123, b is 456

If no __str__ method is defined, print(t) (or print(str(t))) will use the result of __repr__ instead

If no __repr__ method is defined then the default is used, which is pretty much equivalent to..

def __repr__(self):
    return "<%s instance at %s>" % (self.__class__.__name__, id(self))

Answer 3

A prettier version of response by @user394430

class Element:
    def __init__(self, name, symbol, number):
        self.name = name
        self.symbol = symbol
        self.number = number

    def __str__(self):
        return  str(self.__class__) + '\n'+ '\n'.join(('{} = {}'.format(item, self.__dict__[item]) for item in self.__dict__))

elem = Element('my_name', 'some_symbol', 3)
print(elem)

Produces visually nice list of the names and values.

<class '__main__.Element'>
name = my_name
symbol = some_symbol
number = 3

An even fancier version (thanks Ruud) sorts the items:

def __str__(self):
    return  str(self.__class__) + '\n' + '\n'.join((str(item) + ' = ' + str(self.__dict__[item]) for item in sorted(self.__dict__)))